Never Alone Written Review

It is that time of the week when LittleRocket reviews a game it has been playing. Today we offer the opportunity to hear our thoughts and opinions on the UpperOne Games developed game Never Alone. A 3 dimensional side scrolling game released in 2014. Enjoy

Story

Never Alone gives the player control of a young Inupiaq girl who is trying to find out the cause of a severe blizzard. This blizzard has stopped her village from doing things like hunting and she takes it upon herself with her fox companion to find out what is going on. The Inupiaq people and their culture are the main focus in this game. There are even extra videos that explain cultural information in order to add extra value to the player’s experience.

The girl traverses the land fending off a Manslayer, a persistent polar bear and even gets eaten by a whale. The spirits help the player but also at a certain point also bring harm to the player. The story all in all is rich in content and would excite anyone interested in the Inupiaq culture or its people.

Presentation

The game has a great sound track ranging from piano pieces that tug at the heart strings to more dramatic music that fits the game’s more urgent situations. One of the other real draws to this game is the art style. It does sport a simple design which at some points works against it however the spirit designs for example or the northern light backgrounds are very nice to look at.

The game does suffer from a few visual glitches. Many a time the characters would disappear off screen or get stuck on an object in their way. This broke the emersion of some scenes.

There is also a narrator who talks over some of the scenes who we thought sounded great and really made it feel like our story was worth telling.

Gameplay

This is where Never Alone sadly falls short. The controls are a little sticky and take some time to get used to. Sometimes you find yourself having to repeat sections because the character moved too much in a specific direction.

Playing as the fox also can become quite boring. We know that the fox is just supposed to be a supporting character but most of the time all you are doing is moving spirits around for the other player. The detection areas for some places were off at times which would sometimes cause the character to plummet to their death.

Closing

Never alone has a great story to tell. The developers packed in a lot of extra content that the player can delve into to better their experience and understanding of the story. Its gameplay unfortunately holds the game back from being a truly amazing experience.